UTEP soared through its final dress rehearsal Friday night, dismantling Texas A&M-Kingsville 75-48 and setting the stage for the beginning of a basketball season.

Miner coach Tim Floyd saw improvement over the last week, but said there needs to be more improvement over the next week as UTEP prepares to raise the curtain on the 2010-11 season against a very good University of the Pacific next Friday night in the Don Haskins Center.

"There were some things better," said Floyd, the veteran coach who is preparing his first UTEP team. "We established our defense at the 10-second line better. Christian (Polk), Randy (Culpepper), Mike Perez and Julyan (Stone) did a good job. We were pretty solid offensively."

Floyd rotated 11 Miners in and out at a feverish pace, using every substitution as a teaching moment. He would catch a player on the way out, sit him in his seat and explain what he did wrong, what he wanted him to do next time in that situation.

Floyd was completely uninterested in individual points and individual statistics in general. But Culpepper put on a few show-stopping moves -- as he does on almost every night. The athletic senior from Memphis drove into the paint, then quickly retreated, draining a fall away jumper on one trip and then, a handful of heartbeats later, roared down the floor with one of those breath-swiping tomahawk dunks .

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.. one of those dunks a 6-footer simply should not be able to do. He finished with 17 points in 26 minutes.

Polk again found his way into the paint and did a good job finishing once he got there. He had 12 points. Big Claude Britten had 10 points, making some nifty moves deep in the paint. Gabriel McCulley had a fine statistical line with eight points, eight rebounds, three blocks. John Bohannon, the 6-10 freshman, also had some good moments, adding seven points, two assists and two steals to the Miner effort.

"Every day we come in, try to go hard and get better," said Britten, the 6-11 senior. "I've got to get a little more in shape so I can stay out there longer. But, as a team, we're all playing together. That's what Coach Floyd wants. Look out for your teammates. We all try to look out for each other."

McCulley, the 6-7 redshirt junior, said, "We got better in some places, but we've still got room for improvement. It's back to the lab, back to the drawing board. I'm sure Coach Floyd will pull out the film in the morning and we will go to work on our mistakes."

Bohannon, who missed some early practices due to illness, said, "I've just got to get myself prepared better. I think our team was better tonight. The ball movement was good. it was flying around at times. Our defense was better in the first half. For me, I have to get over missing because I was sick. I was out for about four days, not moving, not eating much. But that's no excuse. I've got to get back quick. No excuses."

The Miners now have to grind it out for one more week -- two-a-day practices over the weekend, getting ready for next Friday ... prepping for that special moment when a season begins.

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